A Pricey Way to Zip Down Your Private Mountain

THE WORD "SLED" has been with us a long time. Its roots go back thousands of years, to the Old Saxon slido and Old German Schlitten, which roughly translates as "Look out, I can't stop."

The sled—or sledge, a platform on runners to move heavy objects—almost certainly predates the invention of the wheel. And after lo these many millennia, it would seem an invention at the end of itself. Do we hope that technology can somehow improve on the eschatological perfection of the luge, the skeleton, the steam-bent hardwood toboggan or the mighty four-man bobsled, which has proved to be such a boon to organ donations?

ENLARGE

Dan Neil negotiates a turn on the sled.
Mike Belleme for The Wall Street Journal

Can Science make the sled better?

No, it can't. Though, in fairness, Science did give it the old college try with the new Snolo Stealth-X, a $3,000 carbon-composite extreme sled computer-designed and hand-built in New Zealand, where apparently they take Americans for real rubes.

When I learned some plucky Kiwis were attempting to reinvent the recreational sled, it seemed to me that they had a product-design problem. The magical part of sledding is its found-object quality. It was incumbent upon the Stealth-X—bearing the lacquered, polygonal modernism of a Lamborghini Aventador—to prove that it was better than an abandoned trash-can lid.

Adjunct to that is the Stealth-X's punitive price. Three-flipping-grand? For a sled!? everyone I met demanded. Honest to God, they should keep Stealth-X's, with price tag attached, in the back of rescue squad rigs. You could revive people with sputtering outrage.

Furthermore, by combining a sled's lack of maneuverability with the high speed of carbon-composite skis, the Stealth-X effectively weaponizes gravity. The Stealth-X has a promising-looking ski up front, a runner that the rider steers with his or her feet. However, by virtue of the rear-biased seating position, there appears to be little weight upon said ski. As a car guy, who knows that handling is about weight transfer, I immediately recognized the Stealth-X as the shambolic, understeering pig that it turned out to be.

Photos: Extreme Sledding

Click to view the interactive. Mike Belleme for The Wall Street Journal

Not braining myself upon a tree (known in the ski-patrol community as a "Sonny Boner") was my uppermost thought while I unpacked the large box from Down Under; and my concerns were in no way allayed when, after tightening a couple of Torx bolts, I got a look at Stealth-X No. 00001, apparently the first production unit. Oh dear. The Stealth-X's skin of F1-finished carbon composite, the weave miles deep under crystal-clear resin, is the bit of theater that justifies its price, and it is a handsomely made piece, for sure. The sled comes with a wrist leash so that it doesn't shoot down the hill without you. It also has a long webbed belt that doubles as a shoulder harness, allowing you to break the sled down and carry it like a backpack. A flip-up backrest puts the rider in a ball-turret-gunner posture.

By and by, though, I became alarmed at the radiating lethality of the thing and all its cleaving edges at midshin level. Underneath its composite gloss, the color of dried blood, the Stealth-X's front runner is primarily an aluminum structure and the sled is surprisingly massy (21.2 pounds, according to my bathroom scales). At full chat, this thing would cut a skier down like a light saber.

Up to this point—a week or so from a planned trip to North Carolina's ski areas—my frame of mind was one of droll fatalism. If I should streak into the trees and die in a puff of pink mist, so be it. It could be said I died doing what I love, which is to say, shrieking hysterically.

But I certainly did not want to bring harm to others and, it turns out, the local ski resorts were of the exact same mind.

A quick survey of resort operators in North Carolina and Virginia turned up exactly none who were willing to let the Stealth-X on their hills. To be clear: These were enthusiastic nos. Most were incredulous at the very idea. "How are you supposed to stop it?" one ski-patrol leader asked me. I confessed I didn't know.

ENLARGE

The Stealth-X safely at rest
Mike Belleme for The Wall Street Journal

Now I had a problem, or rather, I had the Stealth-X's problem as a general proposition. In order to access the sled's radical performance, I would need a long run, at least a half-mile or so. For that to be anything other than a one-way trip, I would need a ski lift (I suppose a few Richie Riches will attempt heli-sledding). And because I don't live near, say, Banff, I'd have to find a place with snow-making. Such places are called ski resorts, and they were having none of it.

My first test of the Stealth-X came courtesy of the town of Beech Mountain, N.C.—at 5,504 feet, the highest town east of the Mississippi—which maintains a kids' sledding hill (age limit 12 and under) and a single small-caliber snow gun. From the top of the hill to the muddy, frozen puddle at the bottom was a ride of about three seconds. I eschewed a helmet.

More on Cars

To return to the matter of stopping: The Stealth-X designers envision riders controlling their speed by carving like a downhill skier and stopping by kicking the sled sideways in a skilike spray of snow. But if you don't have room for these maneuvers, you have to brake with your feet, sending gouts of snowy slush right at your face. Pthewww….

After a few more days of working the phones, my salvation came in the form of
Kim Jochl,
one of bosses at Sugar Mountain, in Banner Elk, N.C.: If I provided gold-plated proof of insurance, and I paid for the extra man-hours, and I could get on and off the mountain between sessions, when they groom the slopes, I could do it.

That's how I found myself on the back of a snowmobile, puttering uphill, under a burning spray from dozens of snow guns, to the top of Easy Street, one of Sugar Mountain's novice runs. The lads let me off at a piste that descended at about 25 degrees for 50 yards or so, followed by a critical, God-help-you-if-you-miss-it right-hander bounded by sturdy hardwoods. This time, I cinched up my full-face motorcycle helmet, uttered a colorful Saxon oath and pushed off.

For a product made in an autoclave, the Stealth-X is remarkably underbaked. First, in order to turn you have to lean over to drag a hand, right or left, while grabbing hold of the sled on the opposite side. No problem, except there are no hand rails, an obvious oversight. Second, as I feared, the seating position puts the rider's weight on the tail of the sled, rendering the steering runner useless—that is, unless you shimmy your butt forward, knees up, like you're having a 40-mph Pap smear.

Even then, the sled has precious little lateral stability, and when it gets crossed up even slightly on a groomed, icy surface, it catches an edge and flips over. That concludes the discussion of stopping.

After about 20 minutes of frozen futzing, I did manage to get the thing pointed downhill at speeds the Sugar Mountain staff estimated to be 50 mph. OK, now that was fun. In the words of my Old German ancestors: Schlitten!

Alas, the sled has not been reinvented, not by these hobbit-nobbers, anyway. But I have to say, I like living in a world where so conspicuously useless, conceptually flawed and commercially unlikely an item as the Stealth-X can prosper. It speaks to the possibilities, doesn't it? In a world where people have to have one of everything, this is definitely one of them.

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